The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (16 page)

“I’ll leave you to it, then. If you have any trouble with the handwriting, don’t hesitate to find me. I have no doubt that the ink is rather faded by now.”

Thanking her, I divested myself of my boots and scrambled up onto the high old bed, tucking my stockinged feet up beneath me. I tentatively lifted the first notebook out of the box. Number Fifteen. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly certainly had been methodical. On the front leaf, she had listed the date she had transcribed it, the translator she had hired to transpose the non-English documents, and the dates and authors of the historical records. If I were half that organized, I would have my dissertation long since done already.

Digging through for a notebook labeled “1,” I found one without any number on it at all. Opening it at random, I saw, in Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s slanted handwriting, “She waited, breathless, in the lee of Raymond’s Tomb as the dark line of conspirators rode past. To be found would be death.”

Hmm. She hadn’t been joking about that novel, then. I looked speculatively at the notebook. I wondered what would have happened if she had finished it. There were so many novels set around the Indian Mutiny of 1857, but it was hard to think of any set those fifty-odd years earlier, during the Mahratta Wars. It would make a good landscape for fiction.

It also made a good landscape for a dissertation chapter, I reminded myself, forcing myself to put aside the unfinished novel (working title:
Shadow of the Tomb
). Clicking on the bedside lamp, which sent a pleasant pool of light across the counterpane, I curled up against the pillows with Notebook 1, a compilation of various letters and dispatches sent by Henry Russell, the exceedingly prolific Chief Secretary to the Resident of Hyderabad.

According to Russell, the Resident had been tearing out his hair about the presentation of the new Special Envoy, Lord Frederick Staines, to the Nizam of Hyderabad at a durbar called for that purpose. No one knew quite what the unpredictable new Nizam might do. The same went for Lord Frederick, who spoke no Persian and had a worrying lack of knowledge about proper court protocol. Embassies had been banished for less.

And to make matters even worse, his wife had insisted on coming along.

“What is she doing here?” Alex demanded, as Lady Frederick climbed out of the Resident of Hyderabad’s state palanquin.

The state palanquin, in which James rode with the new Special Envoy, was a testament to what raw money and talented craftsmanship could provide. The tasseled silk curtains, however, hid as much as they concealed. In this case, the presence of an extra individual in the palanquin.

For the duration of the ceremonial procession from the Residency to the Nizam’s fortress, Alex had trotted blithely along beside the palanquin, entirely unaware that the tasseled curtains concealed an additional passenger. Only the Resident and the new Special Envoy had been bidden to the Nizam’s durbar. It had never occurred to Alex—or, he imagined, the Nizam—that the Special Envoy’s wife might take it upon herself to attend as well.

Alex gritted his teeth in a way that boded ill for his dental health. One did not just drop by on a supreme ruler unannounced. Especially not a supreme ruler with a penchant for extemporaneous executions.

All around them, armed guards in steel helmets and gauntlets stood at attention, their bearded faces impassive. There had been more guards than usual in the Nizam’s palace, Alex had noticed, stationed in all of the courtyards through which they had passed on their way to the durbar at which Wellesley’s new Special Envoy was to be formally presented to the Nizam.

They had guards enough of their own. The Resident and Lord Frederick had made their way from the Residency complex on the other side of the river accompanied by no fewer than ten companies of infantry, along with five brightly bedecked elephants, a troop of cavalry, and two dozen riderless horses whose sole purpose was to show off brightly colored pennants. After a lifetime in Indian courts, James Kirkpatrick knew how to put on a show.

Would a show be enough to secure their safety in this new and dangerous political climate?

Alex had thought he had addressed his question to the Resident sotto voce. Unfortunately, the acoustics in the courtyard were excellent.

Lady Frederick swept towards him in a whisper of white satin, like moonlight on marble and just as cold. “And a good evening to you, too, Captain Reid. I had thought I might have trouble recognizing you after all this time, but your charm is unmistakable.”

“I’ve been busy,” he said stiffly. And he had been. Since returning two weeks ago, he had taken half his meals in the saddle or at his desk.

There was no reason he should feel guilty about neglecting his former charge. It wasn’t as though she was likely to lack for entertainment. Since their arrival, nearly every family in the Residency had felt it incumbent on themselves to throw a dinner or a card party or a Venetian breakfast for the new arrivals. Alex had avoided all the entertainments with impartial firmness, pleading the very real pressures of work.

And since when had she become
his
, just because he had been saddled with the task of getting her husband from Calcutta to Hyderabad? His obligation to Lady Frederick Staines had ended at the Residency gates, and that was that.

Or that should have been that. Over the past two weeks, Alex had found that he couldn’t quite purge Lady Frederick from his thoughts. Without seeing or consulting her, he had arranged for an Urdu tutor to be sent to her, hoping that would quell his conscience. It hadn’t. He still felt, for some inexplicable reason, obscurely responsible for her, a sensation that even consistent avoidance hadn’t managed to expunge entirely.

It wasn’t as though that were unusual, Alex rationalized to himself. George might have carted home stray dogs, but he was the one who had been left caring for them. This was exactly the same. Lady Penelope was just another stray who had been dumped into his care, like George’s pariah dogs or that one-eared kitten Lizzy had dragged home.

The analogy was an unfortunately apt one. Like Lizzy’s kitten, Lady Frederick seemed determined to sharpen her claws. On him.

“I’m sure you have been,” Lady Frederick agreed with deceptive complaisance. “There are so many things to keep one busy, aren’t there?”

Alex had the feeling he was being accused of something more than neglect, but he couldn’t imagine what. “Look,” he said, with a nod towards the archway. “Someone’s come to fetch us.”

It should, for courtesy’s sake, have been the Nizam’s chief minister, Mir Alam. Instead, it was a palace functionary so minor that Alex didn’t even know his name. From the expression on James’s face, he didn’t either. The Resident was not best pleased, but there was little he could do about. His own position was too precarious.

Fortunately, Lord Frederick didn’t know enough to realize that he had just been insulted. He strutted happily along behind their escort, slowing by the instinct of long practice in the light of those candles that made his gold watch fobs glitter to their best advantage. Like a peacock, decided Alex critically, brightly plumed from a distance, but inclined to peck when one got up close.

“Keep an eye on . . . ,” James murmured, tipping his head in Lady Frederick’s direction, before following along behind Lord Frederick into the durbar hall.

Typical, thought Alex. Simply bloody typical. Once again, he was the one left holding the leash.

Resigning himself to the inevitable, Alex extended an arm. “Shall we?”

Lady Frederick eyed his arm as she might a dead snake. “I don’t need a keeper.”

“That’s what you said before you jumped into the river.”

“I doubt there are any bodies of water in the durbar hall,” retorted Lady Frederick, marching along ahead of him. Alex was reminded more than ever of Lizzy’s cat. Had Lady Frederick had a tail, it would have been sticking straight up in the air.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t treacherous depths.”

Lady Frederick looked up at him sideways. “Do you have treachery on the mind, Captain Reid?”

“I’m not the one I’m worried about,” he said frankly.

Lady Frederick regarded him scornfully. “I shouldn’t think you would be. After all, you know exactly what you’re planning.”

Exactly what did she think he was planning? Other than making sure she left the palace alive? Even without mysterious marigolds roaming about, there was Tajalli’s father, plumping for the restoration of the French force in Hyderabad; the new Nizam, providing a target for schemers and fortune hunters across the realm; and Mir Alam, rotten with old grudges and new leprosy. Or was that old leprosy and new grudges? Either way, the combination was about as conducive to civil peace as a Montague and Capulet reunion dinner.

“What do you think I’m planning?” Alex demanded, but he had lost his opportunity. The durbar hall opened up before them and he had the rare opportunity of seeing Lady Frederick well and truly speechless.

Even Alex, who had attended the durbar time and time again, had to admit it was an impressive sight. The Nizam preferred to hold his durbars by dark. It was a practical measure, avoiding the heat of the day, but the resultant forest of candles created an artificial wonder-land of the durbar hall, turning the proceedings into a page from a Deccani manuscript, too brilliant to be real. The hall was an architectural fantasy, the walls covered with trompe l’oeil scenes, so that parrots seemed suspended in flight above the heads of the courtiers and peacocks opened their mouth in eternal cry from beneath wide-leafed trees where the mango were perpetually in season.

Next to the lifelike guise of the paintings, the courtiers themselves seemed no more than an artist’s illusion, a piece of Eastern decadence for a European collector to marvel at. The light of the thousand candles in their tall silver stands oscillated off their rich silks and jewels, flirting with creamy shadows along the long ropes of pearls hanging around the necks of the nobles, shimmering along priceless lengths of gold brocade, cascading off diamond-set turban ornaments, and setting ruby armbands smoldering like the acquisitive glint in a merchant’s eye.

It wasn’t the jewels that held Lady Frederick’s attention, but the guards who stood sentry along the sides of the durbar hall, long, steel-tipped staffs propped against their soldiers. Their uniforms were similar to those worn by Madras sepoys, a long red coat over a pair of baggy trousers. They were all women.

“The Zuffir Plutun,” said Alex, with a nod towards the lady guards.

“The Victorious Brigade,” Lady Frederick translated, looking thoughtfully at the guards, as though she suspected them of being an optical illusion.

“Did you think I had made them up?”

Lady Frederick adopted her most inscrutable expression. Alex took that as a yes.

A cupbearer presented Alex with a small agate cup of coffee, tongue-scaldingly hot from the brazier that the Nizam kept burning in the center of the durbar. Slightly uncertainly, the cupbearer offered a twin of his cup to Lady Frederick. Looking as nonchalant as though she had been drinking at durbars all her life, Lady Frederick lifted the cup to her lips.

Alex curled his fingers around the polished surface, which was deceptively cool. “You might want to—”

Lady Frederick knocked back the contents.

“—sip that,” finished Alex, as Lady Frederick’s face turned an interesting color of puce.

Her throat worked convulsively as she swallowed the burning liquid, grounds and all.

“I’m fine,” she said hoarsely, giving him a look that dared him to contradict her.

Alex blew lightly at the surface of his own cup before taking a very small sip. “The Nizam likes his coffee hot,” he said helpfully.

Lady Frederick gave him a look of death. “I know.”

“Would you like another cup?” Alex made as though to summon the cupbearer. Never let it be said that he hadn’t behaved like a gentleman.

“Not to drink,” said Lady Frederick, in a tone that left no doubt as to where she would have liked to pour it.

The chuckle welled up in Alex’s throat before he had time to clamp it down again. He turned it into a cough, but not quite quickly enough.

A reluctant grin curled the corner of Lady Frederick’s lips. She had a coffee ground stuck between her two front teeth, giving her a charmingly gapped-tooth expression.

Alex held out his cup. “You can have mine, if you like,” he said. “It ought to be cool by now. At least, cooler,” he amended.

Lady Frederick started to reach for it, and then drew back her hand, as thought she had thought better of it. “No. Thank you.”

Alex glanced down at his cup, but he didn’t see anything suspect about it. There were no drowned flies floating on the surface, or even particularly large coffee grounds impersonating dead flies. It was a perfectly potable cup of Turkish coffee. More potable, Alex suspected, than the beverages pretending to that name being served in London. On the other hand, had he just bolted a cup of boiling coffee, he wouldn’t be too keen on the beverage either.